UTSA Meet a Roadrunner: Alumnus Paul Rodriguez plans to do research

By Jo Ann Jones
Communications Specialist, College of Education and Human Development

(Jan. 1, 2014) -- Meet Paul Rodriguez. He was the first doctoral student in the UTSA Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies to pursue a higher education emphasis

Rodriguez began his doctoral program in fall 2010. After three-and-a-half years of study, he said his degree is something he is very proud of.

“It feels good to be the first graduate,” said Rodriguez. “I think that it’s great that the Higher Education Administration emphasis is becoming more popular. Each year we’ve had more interest in it.”

The UTSA faculty is likewise very proud of Rodriguez.

“We [were] very excited to have Paul Rodriguez as our first higher education emphasis graduate,” said Gloria Crisp, associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (ELPS). “We expect that the higher education component of the ELPS department will continue to grow and develop over the next few years.”

Now an alumnus, Rodriguez hopes to secure a postdoctoral fellowship or a tenure-track assistant professor position at a research university.

“It’s been really great here at UTSA,” he said. “The professors have been outstanding. The ELPS department has provided me a lot of material in terms of going to conferences, presenting at conferences, producing research, getting involved in different scholar programs, and now helping with the job process.”

Following in Rodriguez’s footsteps are 37 doctoral students and 154 master’s students currently pursuing an emphasis in Higher Education Administration through the UTSA College of Education and Human Development’s top-tier degree programs.

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A revolution in cloud computing is underway, and Ravi Sandhu believes it will be much bigger than the PC and Internet revolutions that have already changed the way we live. Sandhu, director of the UTSA Institute for Cyber Security, says UTSA is taking a leadership role in tackling three fundamental cloud technology problems: how to build and operate the cloud, how to use it profitably for diverse applications and how to keep it secure.

Sandhu, the Lutcher Brown Distinguished Chair in Cyber Security in the College of Sciences, and Ram Krishnan, assistant professor of electrical engineering in the UTSA College of Engineering, are funded by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to improve cloud security.

Did you know? Sandhu, a world-renowned cybersecurity expert, holds 30 patents, has authored more than 250 papers and been cited more than 30,000 times.

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